Vanilla or chocolate? Tea or coffee? Pancakes or French toast? We are all faced with decisions in our lives, and we are forced to come up with answers to questions daily. But to wear, or not to wear, animal products is the question at hand. Deciding not to wear animal products really needs to be a conscious effort. A few months back I wrote for a website. The creator of the website is a photographer, so he took some pictures of me to go along with my blogs. The first blog I wrote was about animal rights, which I also posted here a few weeks ago. In the picture, I purposely wore “leather” boots, and someone asked the question that I knew would arise: “Are your boots real leather?” However, my boots are definitely all man-made material.
Ironically enough, not long before I wrote that first blog I went to see The Nutcracker at the Academy of Music, and PETA was outside handing out pamphlets about wearing fur. Years ago when people went to the Academy of Music, they got all decked out in their mink coats and diamonds. It’s not really like that anymore; still it was reassuring to see their presence. My aunt and I just had a conversation about wearing fur, and she thinks that people should not even wear fake fur. I disagree because I think it is fine for people to wear faux fur and faux leather. Why not? It isn’t real, and it proves the point that people can still look just as good wearing faux fur and leather – well, actually look even better than wearing the real thing.
The poor animals (cats, dogs, rabbits, fox, raccoons, etc…) whose fur is robbed from them are skinned alive; how horrible that must be - just unimaginable. A problem is that many of the fur products are mislabeled, and people really don’t know what they are buying. However, real is real, and it is expensive, so a person knows when he/she is buying real fur because of the cost. But many times the real fur is labeled with something like jackal when it is really cat or dog. So it is better to not buy real fur at all.
The poor animals (cats, dogs, rabbits, fox, raccoons, etc…) whose fur is robbed from them are skinned alive; how horrible that must be - just unimaginable. A problem is that many of the fur products are mislabeled, and people really don’t know what they are buying. However, real is real, and it is expensive, so a person knows when he/she is buying real fur because of the cost. But many times the real fur is labeled with something like jackal when it is really cat or dog. So it is better to not buy real fur at all.
I feel it is our duty to help animals. They have no voice and no choice: we are their voice, and we have the power of choice!
*Melissa Norbeck
